Monthly Archives: February 2013

Spring is nigh, and we’re dusting off our free weights, trying out Pilates, buying new running shoes. Can you feel the promise in the air?

What a great time to talk about learning to understand and flex to your Conative Style.

My what?

Conation (koh NAY shun) relates to desire, volition, and striving. Conative Style is our natural mental tendency that produces an effort. It’s your own instinctive mode of action, the way in which you would tackle any new task given no instructions, on your own.

“No matter what combination of talents we bring into play, we make the biggest impact when we solve problems in ways that are most natural to us.” And doing jobs that inhibit our natural modes and require least preferred actions? That produces “conative strain.”

We all know that it takes more effort, more commitment, and perhaps more vitamins to learn a new upper-body weight training regimen than it does to jog the same route you’ve done for years. By understanding your preferred style of doing, you can capitalize on your strengths and gently broaden your range of motion—without tearing anything or pulling up lame.

How it works

The Kolbe A Index rates the strength of your preference on a scale of 1-10 (10 is high) for each of four Action Modes. (You might notice some overlap between these descriptions and those of the DIsc Inventory or Ned Herrmann’s Whole Brain Model. If so, fellow psych nerd, let’s get coffee later.)

My Kolbe Career MO+ ™ Report lists these examples of jobs that have brought satisfaction to people with an MO similar to mine: sales, on-camera TV, comedian, therapist, alternative program educator, copywriter, fundraiser, and interviewer. Spooky accurate.)

The Kolbe A test costs $49.95 and this author receives no kickback, but I do help clients apply this new knowledge with their teams.

The resulting career report defines why a particular job role may—or may not—work out and even suggests question to ask a prospective new boss. (The best ones from mine: “Would I be able to work on several tasks at the same time? Will someone be able to assist me if my equipment is not working properly?”)

Here’s how to leverage your Conative style to cover more ground with less strain:

Know thyself—and thy team

Maximize the time spent using your preferred modes of action

Bag, barter, or “better” the tasks that most strain and pain you. And, to help you do that…

Time for us to practice what we preach and deliver a little stewardship to an organization that is truly building capacity in the not-for-profit sector. A huge thank you to The Wallace Foundation for their leadership in creating strong education in the United States – and most particularly for their newly unveiled financial management toolkit: StrongNonProfits.org. I admit that I haven’t personally discovered the Foundation’s motivation, values and philanthropic preferences but I think it’s not a wild guess to say that they value creating useful, practical tools for the non-profit sector.

They have done exactly that.

The financial management toolkit brings together resources in four key areas:

offering links to free-standing tools and resources from other websites (like another of our favorites: Blue Avocado) to help support best practice in a variety of areas where non-profit leaders – or Board Chairs, like me – may be looking for addition support.

Among my favorites:

A Non-Profit Dashboard and Signal Lights for Board: this terrific resource from Blue Avocado has strongly influenced how my board reports and reflects on our progress in our strategic plan. It’s mighty useful too in identifying the most important metrics to be reviewing monthly. As Judy Vredenburgh, CEO of Girls Inc., reminds us: “We do what we measure.”

Also in the Monitoring section: “Understanding Auditing Financial Statements” and “Understanding Indirect Costs”

The Operations section is so chock-a-block with great resources, I couldn’t choose just one: accounting basics, choosing accounting software, internal controls, fiscal management activities calendar, and a program budget template – these are just a few from this section.

My favorite of all? An interactive tool called “Go or No Go” – a tool that walks you through the steps to decide whether a contract or funding opportunity is a wise, strategic choice to pursue. This one also comes from the good folks at Fiscal Management Associates.

Wallace Foundation: you have done a great service with this fiscal management toolkit. You identified exactly what’s on our minds and delivered.

A core part of our work here at The Osborne Group is helping organizations build fundraising capacity. Very often our clients want to build a major gift program or strengthen their existing major gift program and our job is take a look at the best way for them to create major gift success. This involves a detailed understanding of what makes major gift programs and efforts tick and taking a close look at how any given organization measures up. While we take a very comprehensive look at data provided by our clients, we interview staff, board and investors, and we look at marketing materials and marketing collateral, etc. we have found that the likelihood of major gift success boils down to a few factors. I’d like to share four of them with you here.

Do you have sufficient prospects? Fundraising is a very quantifiable business; there is no reason to ever guess at projected results or be surprised when your numbers fall short. How many gifts do you need and at what levels do you need to make your goal? How many prospects do you need to close each gift? What does that add up to and do you have enough prospects? It really is just that simple. I am continually amazed at how few experienced chief development officers and major gift officers fail to have or make active use of a projected table of gifts or the more accurate name by name table of gifts. If you have enough prospects, there is a good chance your major gift effort will be successful. If you don’t, it probably won’t.

Do You Have a Vision? Vision is a fancy word for answering the question “why should I give you any money?” or saying “this is what will be different tomorrow because you gave money today”. A good vision promises specific outcomes within a specific period of time (usually 1-5 years), is a stretch for your organization requiring increased generosity by your core supporters, and is articulated in terms of the impact it has on the community and society in general. Let’s be clear, most major donors have a clear sense of the amount of money they are going to give away in any given time period and when you ask for a major gift you are either asking that donor to not to give to something else or give more than they intended and thus make some other interest of theirs less of a priority. People and institutions are open to this but only when the impact is clearly and specifically defined. This is your vision and you need it or your major gift program is dead in the water.

What does your leadership level annual giving look like? Typically leadership level annual giving is defined as gifts between as gifts from $1,000 – $24,999 or $1,000 – $49,999 depending on the size of the organization. You can think of it as your mid-level gifts for your organization or your highest level gifts that you receive on an annual basis. Another way to think about it is the level that a potential donor will give prior to making a major gift. Explicitly or implicitly high capacity donors who give at this level are saying “let’s see what you do with this money.” They are evaluating if they hear from you on a regular basis, if you’re communicating the impact of their gift to them effectively and regularly, and if they are appreciated. If they have a clear sense that their gift made an impact and what that impact was they may start to consider a major gift. If they don’t, they won’t.

This work is usually only effective if you have an actual plan. What does your stewardship calendar look like for this group? For your major gift prospects in this group do you know how they prefer to have you communicate impact? Do you have an individualized cultivation plan for each?

Do you have a sufficiently large, motivated, affluent and influential volunteer corps? Many organizations approach the creation of, or enhancement of, a major gift program as a exercise in strategic staffing. Having well trained and high quality major gift officers certainly is very important for major gift success but the best major gift officers in the world can do little if they are not surrounded by sufficient affluent and influential volunteers starting with the board. You don’t hire your hire major gift officers and development staff based on their personal connections (at least you shouldn’t). You hire them because they are skilled at working with large numbers of people and getting them moving in the same direction in a motivated manner that results in large gifts. But they need prospects to work with and those prospects must be generated by an army of volunteers. The more volunteers you have with high levels of social capital the more prospects you have. Again, it’s that simple.

There are many other factors such as engagement, culture of philanthropy, sufficient staffing, sufficient capitalization, etc. that go into major gift success but I would consider the above fundamental. Without them, no matter how good everything else is major gift success will be difficult. These four predictors are in many ways the hardest areas to develop but by far provide the largest payoff.

Recently, I was in Albuquerque, NM speaking to 300 women and girls at Sandia Prep about the power of leadership philanthropy. I framed the discussion by discussing the overarching goal – life-long inspired, joyful, generous giving of all our innate gifts, talents and expertise, time, networks and treasure. The goal is important. Too often, we only seek a volunteer’s talents and time. Or, we think about the individual as a donor and only seek treasure and contacts. True philanthropy is about giving one’s all so that together we change the world.

Once we all agreed on the goal, we discussed the importance of being inspired and inspiring. As philanthropy leaders, we seek causes that engender passion within us – causes that have touched us, moved us, worry us. We look for problems we’d like to help fix. Similarly, as not-for-profit leaders, we most offer big ideas that address important societal issues and thus inspire deep and lasting commitment.

Next, we spent time on the notion of joyful giving. How we, as donor/volunteers, are engaged, solicited and stewarded matters. When done well, we do feel joy. I can remember being solicited by Don Jackson when he was with national Easter Seals. The conversation was so empowering, personal and fun that I said yes with joy and gave more than he requested. A great solicitation is a wonderful thing.

But joy also comes from within each of us as leaders and donor/volunteers. Yes, we need information, and facts, and trust. But we must also come to the charity with an open mind, giving heart and smile. It is an honor and privilege to help the people, animals, communities, faiths, ideals and environments the not-for-profits serve.

We then moved to the concept of generosity. I asked the audience to share at their tables, “How did you learn to be generous (or how are you learning to be so)?” The spoke with each other for about five minutes – five minutes out of a 75 minute session. Although we spoke about many things after this exercise, it was the discussion about generosity that received the most feedback, tears, laughter and action.

At the end of the program people queued-up to speak with me. One woman asked for advice about starting a scholarship fund for nurses. She wanted to make a difference a difference for others – the potential nurses but most importantly, all of the people the nurses would touch throughout their careers. Thinking about generosity and leadership empowered her to take action. She didn’t have a hospital healthcare organization, medical school or community foundation in mind, but was ready to find the right place and make an investment. That five minute conversation inspired a new and wonderful gift.

Another participant told me she was moved to tears because her colleague told her, “I learned to be generous from you.” She didn’t know her actions had been observed, admired and emulated by her colleague until they shared at the luncheon. Sometimes we don’t know we are empowering others.

A student from Sandia Prep said she learned from one of her teachers. Good for Sandia Prep. Many said their parents or grandparents taught them. Others spoke of religious leaders, neighbors and friends. Everyone said the conversation got them thinking, feeling, wanting to do more or just made them feel proud that they already did so much.

Perhaps the above examples have you thinking. They got me reflecting and I thought I’d share several things worth noting:

The reason I love the work we do. Everyone at The Osborne Group is a philanthropist and volunteer. We love our clients’ missions. We love teaching. What a gift to be able to do work that is both meaningful and enjoyable.

How smart it is for an organization to open its doors to others for a conversation not about the institution, but about societal topics with broad appeal. Yes, the room was filled with friends of the school, but also with people with no connection. The Albuquerque AFP chapter, United Way, local businesses, fundraisers and board members from other organizations filled the seats. They all left seeing the school at its best, and the experience created social capital.

Asking provocative questions and listening to understand is one of the best ways we know to inspire action. I asked them to think about how they learned to be generous and look at the results. Asking a question is so much more effective that pitching and persuading. Great questions get people thinking. If you would like our latest list of strategic questions tailored for your sector, contact me at Karen@theosbornegroup.com

Modeling behavior is one of the best ways to teach, inspire and empower. I remember reading an article about raising children who are avid readers. When my children were little, I read to them every night, long after they could read the books themselves. I attributed their excellent reading and writing skills to that nightly habit. It turns out that reading to a child is the right thing to do, but what actually creates readers is seeing us enjoy reading. In the same way, by being joyful and generous investors ourselves, we inspire others to do the same.

Many of you have probably seen or heard of the show, “Hoarding: Buried Alive” on TLC. Each episode tells the stories of people struggling with hoarding behavior that has made everyday life unbearable for both them and their loved ones. Many of these individuals have piles and piles of objects and even garbage taking over their homes and eventually their lives. For me, donor prospecting took on the same epic proportions. I will admit it.

As a fundraiser, I have been guilty of donor hoarding – not being able to let go of donor names on my prospect list. I’ve seen these prospect names grow and grow and grow to eventually take over my work life (not really… but you get the point). So as a former and now-recovered donor hoarder, here are a few tips for overcoming this condition:

Ask yourself, “Does it truly make sense to have this person on my prospect list?” You might say to yourself, “Well, they gave $100,000 to another organization; why not ours?” But capacity alone doesn’t qualify someone to stay on your portfolio, nor does it establish a relationship. Here is where internal ratings and asking specific questions beyond capacity make a huge difference. Case in point: I had Donald Trump on my major gifts prospect list for an organization I worked for. Yes, “The Donald” had the capacity to give to my organization but he wasn’t personally connected to my cause nor did we have true access to him. Needless to say, Donald Trump remained on our events invitation list but was removed from my major gifts portfolio. Ask yourself these critical questions when determining whether or not to move a donor name off of your prospect list:

Is the person personally connected and engaged with my organization?

Are they philanthropic?

Do you or someone in your organization have access to the person directly?

During the next 6-12 months can the relationship move to the point where the person is ready to have a conversation about their philanthropy to your organization?

If the answer to most of these questions is NO and you don’t have a strategy you can implement immediately to move this relationship forward, then it’s time to move on and release this person from your portfolio. You can give this person a new home in your annual campaign or with your special events.

2. Face Your Fears

You might fear that if you drop the name off your list they might not ever give…or worse you find out they gave a multi-million dollar gift to another organization. I know from experience how this fear can place you in a holding pattern, just waiting… waiting… waiting. However, I learned that I couldn’t let the fear that the donor might give to another organization keep them on my list (just in case). The truth is if you have done the work to engage this donor and connect them to your organization and the relationship has not moved, it might not ever move in the way that you want it to and you have to be OK with that. It’s not about our wants but the interests of the donor. Like the movie, “He’s Just Not Into You”, the donor might just not be into your organization.

Stop worrying that you might lose a potential big donor. Let it go and spend the time on those donors who are into your organization. Focus on those donors who want to be engaged with your organization. They are out there!

3. Stop Allowing Names to Pile Up. Get HELP!

A couple of years ago I inherited a list of 400 suspects. That’s right: suspects, not qualified relationships. It was overwhelming to say the least. It took me a good six months to finally come up with a process to evaluate these relationships and be fine with moving a majority of the names off my portfolio. The process was simple: in addition to asking myself the critical questions listed above, I asked for help from my peers and colleagues.

The good thing is that you are not alone in this process. Even if you are a one-person development shop, you still have a group of people to assist you. Start by rating the list of names internally. Program staff, long time employees, the CEO and other members of the development staff can all help by adding what they know about the prospective donors. Share these names with them often and develop an internal rating system to assess for capacity, affiliation, inclination and readiness. Then make a decision to either move the relationship to another part of your development efforts or implement a strategy to move the relationship forward. Do this at minimum on a quarterly basis.

There’s Hope!

It is possible to overcome donor hoarding. I promise! Remember your task is to engage the most promising qualified donors with your organization and authentically move these relationships forward. Unlike the TV show where people hoard objects, the reality is that we are talking about people and our relationships with them. While watching a “Hoarders” episode, I go into massive cleaning attack. I clean absolutely everything in the house. I hope this episode inspires you to do the same with your donor prospect lists. It’s OK to let release these names allowing for time spent building relationships resulting in more enthused, inspired and generous donors to your organization. For more information to cure donor hoarding and a complimentary tool for donor prospecting and pipeline building, please contact us.

As you read this I have probably already sat down to meet with my very first boss, who is hiring me for the second time: first as her annual fund assistant, and this time as her consultant for her school’s annual fund. As I prepared for our visit, I have been reflecting on how the annual fund that she and I built back in 199…whatever… has changed from the practices we see our clients implementing today.

Here is my running list of Annual Fund Strategies: Then and Now (Add a big, booming voice as you say “Then and Now” in your head for added effect… Nice, right?) What would you add to your list? How has your annual fund approach changed in the last ten years? Or the last five? What happened before 2008 that is just not coming back? Post comments here or leave your ideas on our Facebook page. We’ll collect them all and post in a future blog entry.

Then… Segmenting your mailing was enough. I will admit to having a 32-segment mailing once, each with their own slightly parsed difference between one letter text and another. Everyone got fundamentally the same message and everyone was just asked to “give, give, give… trust us and we’ll do the rest.” Unrestricted dollars that could slop around to every corner of the budget were the only thing to do.

NOW: There are few programs today who don’t see a higher level of engagement and more inspired giving when donors are given the ability to be activists. CFOs (and I) still need unrestricted dollars: that will always be the heart of a strong annual fund, but making tangible the impact of giving to the annual is mandatory. No more “margin of excellence”; annual fund dollars help provide things like the manipulatives underpinning the mathematics program in the after-school experience. Gone is “bridge the gap” talk about other revenue sources and the annual fund; the annual fund helps ensure that mission staff have the iPads and tech training they need to collect and evaluate data on the efficacy of your program in the field. These dollars all need to hit your budget directly, but need specifics around them that make it clear and concrete what they accomplish.

An extra idea, building on this one? Look for three to five “big buckets” within your budget toward which your annual fund gifts can be designated (not restricted! This makes your CFO happy!). For schools these categories are often: financial aid, faculty salaries, library and technology, spaces for learning, athletics, etc… What would those big budget areas be for your organization? Allowing your donors to vote with their dollars for the things that most resonate for them not only provides one more good reason to step up giving, but also gives you a clear road map for how to steward these donors.

…which leads to “Then and Now” #2…

Then… Stewardship was something you did for endowment donors, donors of Chairs, building naming, scholarships when they became fully funded and probably only did once: put the plaque up, name the new Chair holder, have a dinner, and wash your hands of it.

NOW: That pig isn’t going to fly for even one second. Not only must stewardship be a year-on-year institutional value that is woven throughout your relationship building with your donors, it is a universal. All annual fund donors deserve WORLD CLASS stewardship. Getting used to talking about the annual fund in tangible, specific ways is the first step. Understanding your donors’ motivation through their gift designation is a second step. Getting people to help you take on this project – even with its enormous value add – is the third.

Try this: rather than just asking volunteers to “please make 10 (or 20 or 30) calls” to past donors, thank-a-thon style, let your volunteers know that you have $75,000 (or $500,000 or $5M) worth of thank you calls to make and would they be willing to take $12,000 of that. Then keep reporting back: “Your thank you calls valued at $75,000 last year turned into repeat gifts of $83,000 this year.” Who wouldn’t feel great and motivated to do more?

Finally, a NOW and NOW:

Maybe you saw these two incredible stories about focused giving contests – one at Columbia that raised $7M in one day (ONE DAY! CloEve Demmer, who spearheaded this is a friend of ours and, no kidding, one smart lady!) and the other that may have helped inspire and guide Columbia’s efforts: Giving Days.

Among the reason these two focused campaigns worked is that they borrowed the “vocabulary” of gaming to bring fun into the annual fund. (C’mon. I had to. Put the FUN back in the annual fund? A classic knee slapper. To development officers only.)

These initiatives had a near-term, reachable goal for which everyone was responsible.

They had a clear beginning, middle and end to their quest. A 365 day campaign is the AF Director’s reality but soooooo long for a volunteer.

They had rules of engagement: certain volunteers could use any of a variety of outreach tools, but had to do it themselves and accounted back to “home base” with their results.

They knew what winning was going to mean: dollars, new donors, repeat donors.

We play games because we love taking on tasks that are exactly hard enough. How can you use today’s tools – email, social media, video, podcasting, blogging, etc… to make your annual fund volunteers’ job more fun and more of a game? And, how about using this to jump start a monthly giving program? Europeans envy our culture of giving in many ways, but are befogged by why we don’t embrace monthly giving programs more fully. Deploy your volunteers on a quest for new monthly donors!

Another Now: these campaigns were terrific, engaging, generated great excitement and energy. But what do we do the other 364 days a year? Once upon a time, we mailed a lot of letters, made slightly fewer phone calls and almost never left the office. Today a robust annual fund program must be anchored with personal visits to top donors in conjunction with the major gift staff (we have a great resource on boosting annual giving in a campaign here.), to leadership donors to explore their passion and focus for their giving, to new potential leadership donors, to lapsed donors and to volunteers. If there were one more position everyone could add right now, I would vote for a solid individual giving officer who LOVES being on the road, closing $1,000, $10,000, $50,000 annual gifts three days out of five.

Are the fundamentals of annual giving the same? Yes. I agree that they are. Are there so many more ways to be creative and innovative in reaching your community of supporters? Absolutely. The annual fund is more fun.

Engagement and involvement are critical to succesful fundraising. As fundraisers, we must go beyond simply telling people how strong our work is, how effective the methodology is, etc.; we must show them. Messages that are delivered by active engagement are far more credible and memorable than messages that are delivered orally or written. People believe and remember their own experiences. They tend not to believe or remember what they have simply been told.